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Ontogeny is the origination and development of an organism, usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the study of the entirety of an organism's lifespan.
Blastulation is the stage in early animal embryonic development that produces the blastula. In mammalian development the blastula develops into the blastocyst with a differentiated inner cell mass and an outer trophectoderm. The blastula is a hollow sphere of cells known as blastomeres surrounding an inner fluid-filled cavity called the blastocoel. Embryonic development begins with a sperm fertilizing an egg cell to become a zygote, which undergoes many cleavages to develop into a ball of cells called a morula. Only when the blastocoel is formed does the early embryo become a blastula. The blastula precedes the formation of the gastrula in which the germ layers of the embryo form.
Gastrulation is the stage in the early embryonic development of most animals, during which the blastula, or in mammals the blastocyst, is reorganized into a two-layered or three-layered embryo known as the gastrula. Before gastrulation, the embryo is a continuous epithelial sheet of cells; by the end of gastrulation, the embryo has begun differentiation to establish distinct cell lineages, set up the basic axes of the body, and internalized one or more cell types including the prospective gut.
Mammalian embryogenesis is the process of cell division and cellular differentiation during early prenatal development which leads to the development of a mammalian embryo.
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the animal hatches.
The blastocoel, also spelled blastocoele and blastocele, and also called cleavage cavity, or segmentation cavity is a fluid-filled or yolk-filled cavity that forms in the blastula during very early embryonic development. At this stage in mammals the blastula develops into the blastocyst containing an inner cell mass, and outer trophectoderm.
A germ layer is a primary layer of cells that forms during embryonic development. The three germ layers in vertebrates are particularly pronounced; however, all eumetazoans produce two or three primary germ layers. Some animals, like cnidarians, produce two germ layers making them diploblastic. Other animals such as bilaterians produce a third layer between these two layers, making them triploblastic. Germ layers eventually give rise to all of an animal's tissues and organs through the process of organogenesis.
In developmental biology, animal embryonic development, also known as animal embryogenesis, is the developmental stage of an animal embryo. Embryonic development starts with the fertilization of an egg cell (ovum) by a sperm cell, (spermatozoon). Once fertilized, the ovum becomes a single diploid cell known as a zygote. The zygote undergoes mitotic divisions with no significant growth and cellular differentiation, leading to development of a multicellular embryo after passing through an organizational checkpoint during mid-embryogenesis. In mammals, the term refers chiefly to the early stages of prenatal development, whereas the terms fetus and fetal development describe later stages.
In embryology, cleavage is the division of cells in the early development of the embryo, following fertilization. The zygotes of many species undergo rapid cell cycles with no significant overall growth, producing a cluster of cells the same size as the original zygote. The different cells derived from cleavage are called blastomeres and form a compact mass called the morula. Cleavage ends with the formation of the blastula, or of the blastocyst in mammals.
In biology, polyspermy describes the fertilization of an egg by more than one sperm. Diploid organisms normally contain two copies of each chromosome, one from each parent. The cell resulting from polyspermy, on the other hand, contains three or more copies of each chromosome—one from the egg and one each from multiple sperm. Usually, the result is an unviable zygote. This may occur because sperm are too efficient at reaching and fertilizing eggs due to the selective pressures of sperm competition. Such a situation is often deleterious to the female: in other words, the male–male competition among sperm spills over to create sexual conflict.
In amniote embryonic development, the epiblast is one of two distinct cell layers arising from the inner cell mass in the mammalian blastocyst, or from the blastula in reptiles and birds, the other layer is the hypoblast. It drives the embryo proper through its differentiation into the three primary germ layers, ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm, during gastrulation. The amniotic ectoderm and extraembryonic mesoderm also originate from the epiblast.
A blastoderm is a single layer of embryonic epithelial tissue that makes up the blastula. It encloses the fluid filled blastocoel. Gastrulation follows blastoderm formation, where the tips of the blastoderm begins the formation of the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm.
In developmental biology, an embryo is divided into two hemispheres: the animal pole and the vegetal pole within a blastula. The animal pole consists of small cells that divide rapidly, in contrast with the vegetal pole below it. In some cases, the animal pole is thought to differentiate into the later embryo itself, forming the three primary germ layers and participating in gastrulation.
Within the field of developmental biology, one goal is to understand how a particular cell develops into a final cell type, known as fate determination. Within an embryo, several processes play out at the cellular and tissue level to create an organism. These processes include cell proliferation, differentiation, cellular movement and programmed cell death. Each cell in an embryo receives molecular signals from neighboring cells in the form of proteins, RNAs and even surface interactions. Almost all animals undergo a similar sequence of events during very early development, a conserved process known as embryogenesis. During embryogenesis, cells exist in three germ layers, and undergo gastrulation. While embryogenesis has been studied for more than a century, it was only recently that scientists discovered that a basic set of the same proteins and mRNAs are involved in embryogenesis. Evolutionary conservation is one of the reasons that model systems such as the fly, the mouse, and other organisms are used as models to study embryogenesis and developmental biology. Studying model organisms provides information relevant to other animals, including humans. While studying the different model systems, cells fate was discovered to be determined via multiple ways, two of which are by the combination of transcription factors the cells have and by the cell-cell interaction. Cells' fate determination mechanisms were categorized into three different types, autonomously specified cells, conditionally specified cells, or syncytial specified cells. Furthermore, the cells' fate was determined mainly using two types of experiments, cell ablation and transplantation. The results obtained from these experiments, helped in identifying the fate of the examined cells.
The development of fishes is unique in some specific aspects compared to the development of other animals.
In the developmental biology of the early twentieth century, a morphogenetic field is a group of cells able to respond to discrete, localized biochemical signals leading to the development of specific morphological structures or organs. The spatial and temporal extents of the embryonic field are dynamic, and within the field is a collection of interacting cells out of which a particular organ is formed. As a group, the cells within a given morphogenetic field are constrained: thus, cells in a limb field will become a limb tissue, those in a cardiac field will become heart tissue. However, specific cellular programming of individual cells in a field is flexible: an individual cell in a cardiac field can be redirected via cell-to-cell signaling to replace specific damaged or missing cells. Imaginal discs in insect larvae are examples of morphogenetic fields.
Cavitation is a process in early embryonic development that follows cleavage. Cavitation is the formation of the blastocoel, a fluid-filled cavity that defines the blastula, or in mammals the blastocyst. After fertilization, cell division of the zygote occurs which results in the formation of a solid ball of cells (blastomeres) called the morula. Further division of cells increases their number in the morula, and the morula differentiates them into two groups. The internal cells become the inner cell mass, and the outer cells become the trophoblast. Before cell differentiation takes place there are two transcription factors, Oct-4 and nanog that are uniformly expressed on all of the cells, but both of these transcription factors are turned off in the trophoblast once it has formed.
Direct development is a concept in biology. It refers to forms of growth to adulthood that do not involve metamorphosis. An animal undergoes direct development if the immature organism resembles a small adult rather than having a distinct larval form. A frog that hatches out of its egg as a small frog undergoes direct development. A frog that hatches out of its egg as a tadpole does not.
Scott Frederick Gilbert is an American evolutionary developmental biologist and historian of biology.
This glossary of developmental biology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts commonly used in the study of developmental biology and related disciplines in biology, including embryology and reproductive biology, primarily as they pertain to vertebrate animals and particularly to humans and other mammals. The developmental biology of invertebrates, plants, fungi, and other organisms is treated in other articles; e.g terms relating to the reproduction and development of insects are listed in Glossary of entomology, and those relating to plants are listed in Glossary of botany.
References
- ↑ "Definition of BLASTODISC". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
- ↑ Gilbert, Scott F. (2006). Developmental biology (8th ed.). Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates Publishers. p. 215. ISBN 9780878932504.
- ↑ Gilbert, Scott F. (2006). Developmental biology (8th ed.). Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates Publishers. pp. 336–337. ISBN 9780878932504.
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